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Did anyone torrent The Hurt Locker?

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DrPizza said:
I'm actually hoping a few people here get sued, as long as they keep us updated on how screwed they're getting.

Also, what's amusing is how naive people are. (Humble Pie) - They already have people's addresses. All they have to do is send an investigator to your area & try to discover unsecured networks. Simple legwork before announcing the suit. Here's how it plays out in court:

"We are accusing that jackoff of illegally downloading our movie."
"But, your honor, I'm not a pirate! It was someone else! I wasn't smart enough to secure my network!"
"Your honor, the facts show that our investigator went to defendant's residence on <dates> prior to filing this suit. Here is proof that his network was secured."
"Guilty! I'm sentencing you to pay $40,000. I'm also fining you $200 for lying under oath."


Think about it - they're at least aware as Humble Pie of past cases. Humble Pie seems to think he's smarter than the lawyers being paid 100's of 1000's of dollars. They're not going to go to court with 10,000 cases that they're going to lose. They follow court decisions too. When they offer to settle out of court for $3000, they're going to profit. For the people who decide to go to court, they're going to win the majority of the cases & profit even more.
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lol, you can easily say, "my network was unsecure for a few days when I was having router issues and I had to reset all the settings for the router." You can say it wasn't until after you noticed that your bandwidth was being sapped that you secured your network.

Win!
 
Probably won't be as easy as it sounds, Trident. I'm sure those guys have got a few more tricks up their sleeve. IIRC some of the forumers mentioned they work at these ISPS, I'd like to see them have a word in.
 
Alright, I don't see too many people actually admitting they downloaded this movie.
So let me just right out and say it, yes I did indeed download this movie; long before it was up for any oscar nominations and long before any US theater release date. So you know if I end up getting sued, that IP list must be quite extensive.

Anyway I don't download movies nor music anymore after seeing numerous torrent sites I used get shut down or stop serving US residents. It just wasn't worth my time to search out more sites and then try to protect myself.

In any case, this is one movie I ended up purchasing on blu-ray...

Guess I'll sit here and see how this plays out. If nothing happens either my ISP is in that 25&#37; range or they don't have my IP.
 
gaidensensei said:
Probably won't be as easy as it sounds, Trident. I'm sure those guys have got a few more tricks up their sleeve. IIRC some of the forumers mentioned they work at these ISPS, I'd like to see them have a word in.
Click to expand...

The problem with prosecuting someone for downloading a single movie is you have to prove that the user knowingly downloaded copyrighted works with the intent to deny the owner their rights under the law. They cannot prosecute someone for downloading a file named "The hurt locker.avi" unless they can show that the person downloading it knew it contained that movie. It could be any creation by anyone with a similar name. If it was listed as "The hurt locker.avi " with details about what it contained then they may have a case. A defense against that is that someone could say they mistakenly clicked the wrong link and deleted the file once they found out it was not what they intended.

This is the reason that studios rarely go after someone based on a single file. They usually wait till they have a pattern of abuse that clearly shows the person charged is downloading illegal content. If you downloaded "The hurt lock.avi" and also downloaded several other files over a period of time then it shows a willingness to break the law.

The wifi defense will not work. Read your ISP agreement everyone clicks through without reading. The persons name on the account is responsible for anything that takes place using that account limited only by what a reasonable person would do. So you wouldn't be responsible if someone broke in your home and used your account, but you can be held liable if someone uses your wifi because you left it unsecured or you let friends use your account after school while they are at your house.


I am totally against downloading of all copyrighted work. Books, movies, music and games. I wish the people that do it would stop rationalizing why they are doing it and man up and admit it for what it is , stealing. Only children try to rationalize something they did knowing it was wrong when they did it.

Don't think it impacts studios or that they have plenty of cash ? Wrong.
I have friends who lost work at some major studios due to them closing. Very talented people that made films like monster house laid off. MGM studios that has existed for a very long time and turned out some great work is on the verge of going bankrupt.
 
Modelworks said:
Don't think it impacts studios or that they have plenty of cash ? Wrong.
I have friends who lost work at some major studios due to them closing. Very talented people that made films like monster house laid off. MGM studios that has existed for a very long time and turned out some great work is on the verge of going bankrupt.
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It's not that simple. People don't watch movies of any kind as much as they used to, and the budget for viewing movies has gotten smaller. There's a lot more competition for entertainment dollars then there used to be, and movie studios are getting a smaller cut. To blame it on copyright infringement is misguided.
 
Modelworks said:
Don't think it impacts studios or that they have plenty of cash ? Wrong.
I have friends who lost work at some major studios due to them closing. Very talented people that made films like monster house laid off. MGM studios that has existed for a very long time and turned out some great work is on the verge of going bankrupt.
Click to expand...

And you believe that's due to piracy?
 
crownjules said:
If you want to discuss if and how the tort system should be restructured then you should probably start a thread in P&N.
Click to expand...

nope, its fundamental to the issue, you can't dodge the fact that the numbers we're talking about here are patently ridiculous.

Modelworks said:
Don't think it impacts studios or that they have plenty of cash ? Wrong.
I have friends who lost work at some major studios due to them closing. Very talented people that made films like monster house laid off. MGM studios that has existed for a very long time and turned out some great work is on the verge of going bankrupt.
Click to expand...

Probably due to some incredibly bad decisions on their own part. Movie attendance is still massive. Dvd, never mind vhs are recent phenomena, their original model did not allow for their double dip of the home market at all. They raked in the profits off dvd and apparently pissed it all away if they are crying poor now. Selling back catalog is just printing money, and since so many collectors bought so many old films that were just sitting rotting on studio shelves before their revenue should have made them golden.

The studios only have themselves to blame. They are well known for ripping off cast/writers/directors etc that don't have enough familiarity with the system. Many have ended up with contracts that define profits and points in such a way that a block buster can get labeled as a money loser, and thus owe nothing in profit sharing. its called hollywood accounting, so when they cry poor, its mostly bs. They probably moved your friends jobs to fat subsidized locations like canada i bet, and blamed piracy. Look at all the later american pie films..which don't make any sense at all unless canada is pretty much paying for the production. Who watches that cr@p?
 
0roo0roo said:
nope, its fundamental to the issue, you can't dodge the fact that the numbers we're talking about here are patently ridiculous.



Probably due to some incredibly bad decisions on their own part. Movie attendance is still massive. Dvd, never mind vhs are recent phenomena, their original model did not allow for their double dip of the home market at all. They raked in the profits off dvd and apparently pissed it all away if they are crying poor now. Selling back catalog is just printing money, and since so many collectors bought so many old films that were just sitting rotting on studio shelves before their revenue should have made them golden.
Click to expand...
DVD created a cash cow for them but keep in mind that they fought the VHS tooth and nail. People bought DVDs at $15, then they slowed had to keep lowering the price to keep people buying them. Blu ray was going to save them but they screwed up and kept the movies at $30 far too long. Now the damn has broke and as a result $10-15 is now the price point for blu-ray. I know 3D movies are coming out but good luck getting people to adopt that.

The movie industry over the last 10 years was the very definition of bloated. It needed to be cut back which means some are going to lose their jobs.
 
DrPizza said:
I'm actually hoping a few people here get sued, as long as they keep us updated on how screwed they're getting.

Also, what's amusing is how naive people are. (Humble Pie) - They already have people's addresses. All they have to do is send an investigator to your area & try to discover unsecured networks. Simple legwork before announcing the suit. Here's how it plays out in court:

"We are accusing that jackoff of illegally downloading our movie."
"But, your honor, I'm not a pirate! It was someone else! I wasn't smart enough to secure my network!"
"Your honor, the facts show that our investigator went to defendant's residence on <dates> prior to filing this suit. Here is proof that his network was secured."
"Guilty! I'm sentencing you to pay $40,000. I'm also fining you $200 for lying under oath."


Think about it - they're at least aware as Humble Pie of past cases. Humble Pie seems to think he's smarter than the lawyers being paid 100's of 1000's of dollars. They're not going to go to court with 10,000 cases that they're going to lose. They follow court decisions too. When they offer to settle out of court for $3000, they're going to profit. For the people who decide to go to court, they're going to win the majority of the cases & profit even more.
Click to expand...
In theory, yes, in practice there's no way they've sent teams of private investigators out to addresses to monitor networks. In any case, it proves nothing about the state of the network on the day that the movie was copied, only on the state at some later date probably months later.
The wifi defense will not work. Read your ISP agreement everyone clicks through without reading. The persons name on the account is responsible for anything that takes place using that account limited only by what a reasonable person would do. So you wouldn't be responsible if someone broke in your home and used your account, but you can be held liable if someone uses your wifi because you left it unsecured or you let friends use your account after school while they are at your house.
Click to expand...
I don't really buy this, regardless of what an ISP agreement says (and this is not between end user and ISP but end user and studio). If somebody has been surfing for child porn for months on an unsecured network no court is going to punish the owner of that network with years in prison if they honestly had no idea their network was being used in this way anymore than if my car is stolen and runs over a kid I will be held accountable.
 
ciproxr said:
Still too early, comcast and cable vision are trying to work out an agreement because its cost's them money to have IP's looked up. Time warner is saying it can only handle 28 look ups a month.
Click to expand...
Really surprised they cannot plug a list of IPs in with date and then a single query later come up with a report showing the address at that time for each IP.
 
Pretty funny that they still think they can stop the internet. Maybe if they lowered the prices of dvd's this sht wouldn't be happening. Proof? The music industry, most people are willing to pay a $1 for a song or 8.99 for an entire album. Nobody wants to pay 10 buck or more for a dvd, not going to happen unless it's a hot new release. If the industry lowers their prices to $5 or less to download, they would see that many who pirate would probably just buy it for the guaranteed quality enhancement and features.
 
KaOTiK said:
I downloaded it.

But I downloaded a week or so after buying it on DVD cause I wanted to watch it again going to sleep and I don't like using my PS3's disc drive if it isn't needed (chance of drive failure). Most movies I own I have a ripped version of to stream to whichever room I want to watch.

Quicker to DL it then ripping and encoding it yourself.
Click to expand...

Good luck getting that to stand up in court.

It won't hold up.
 
SP33Demon said:
Pretty funny that they still think they can stop the internet. Maybe if they lowered the prices of dvd's this sht wouldn't be happening. Proof? The music industry, most people are willing to pay a $1 for a song or 8.99 for an entire album. Nobody wants to pay 10 buck or more for a dvd, not going to happen unless it's a hot new release. If the industry lowers their prices to $5 or less to download, they would see that many who pirate would probably just buy it for the guaranteed quality enhancement and features.
Click to expand...


It doesn't matter what they sell their content for , pirates love to use that rationale. The mindset of "Sell me content at the price I want it and under the terms I want or I will take it" shows a serious lack of morals among those that use that excuse. A person that sells something like a movie has the right to set whatever price they want and whatever terms they like before the sale. If people don't agree, go elsewhere, a movie isn't a right. Instead pirates try to make themselves feel better by blaming the big evil studios, but by doing so reveal their own lack of character.
 
I think this story is bullshit. I doubt we will see any suits coming out of it being the RIAA has really flopped lately proving their cases and the legal system is getting tired of it.

You would think it tens of thousands of people were about to get served there would be more rumbling than a Gizmodo post, right?

For the record, I never saw the film or ever use bittorrent.
 
TridenT said:
I'm pretty sure it's still illegal anyway. You're fucked buddy!
Click to expand...

Yeah even if you own the movie, if you torrent it to download, you're sharing. That's the issue with bit torrent. If everyone wasn't sharing and were just downloading from a single source, they'd just sue that one source.
 
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